Thirst
Pyotyr Kurtinski
BMI, 1995
ISBN: 0-8439-3826-9
Vampires have long been the bane of the Mafia. They are always putting their bat-beaks into the New York mafia’s nefarious deals. They take to the night and reign grenades and bullets upon the mobsters. It’s just regular day-to-day stuff. Right? No. Oh, okay. Guess it's just my day-to-day life.
Well, Thirst by Pyotyr Kurtinski tells us exactly what would happen if a vampire took on the mafia like he was Mack Bolan: The Executioner. It seems like a bonkers premise, but it’s not too far of a leap as it seems once you understand who was typing the pages. Pyotyr Kurtinski is actually Peter McCurtin, a noted paperback writer of smut, detective novels, westerns and countless Men’s Adventure works who once won an Edgar Award for his novel Mafioso. Fans of sleazy cinema might know him as the guy who wrote the novelization to the 80s classic The Executioner. He was also an editor at Belmont Tower whose real name was used as a pseudonym by others so much that there was confusion if McCurtin actually existed. He was a fast writer who turned out very competent and sometimes excellent work.
But for an author who worked in the 70s when horror was booming, he produced no works in the genre until Thirst in 1995, his final novel. At the time between Ann Rice and Stephen King, I’m sure McCurtin saw dollar signs when the prospect of writing a horror book. Seemed like a no-brainer. But should he have?
Thirst is about William Van Dieman (Die-man, get it?) a century old vampire in New York. He can turn himself into a giant bat and he goes around doing vampire stuff, i.e. killing people and drinking their blood. He’s also a REAL monster, an evil jerk-ass and annoyingly neurotic. Though he does have a baller castle in the Bronx and has every vampire movie ever on VHS. How bad could this vampire be?
But he’s got problems, the Mob wants his property and he wants to keep it. Sexy lady photographers, private eyes, multiple lawyers and even a Vampiria-like lady pop out to fill out the 300-plus pages and at some vague point in there McCurtinrealizes that the plot should really get going and has a big slam-bang finale.
See, back in the 70s McCurtin created/wrote a Men’s Adventure series called sort of morphed into three series across publishers. Sometimes it was The Assassin, sometimes it was The Sharpshooter and finally at times it was The Marksman. It was about a crazy guy who was a one-man-army against the mafia that always ended in a big massacre. See where I’m going?
Basically McCurtin grafted one of these macho hero’s into a vampire tale and well, not well. McCurtin also seemed to think bats have beaks. Now, I’ll admit the image of a giant bat zooming through the New York skyline with dynamite in its beak is PRETTY COOL, it’s fairly indicative of the laziness of this book. McCurtin would die a couple years later and by all accounts he enjoyed a drink or two so it’s easy to see a slightly “loose” writer punching keys and only vaguely knowing where he was going with the story. It’s not one of his best works, but it was never boring and I’d like to think that McCurtin’s tongue was in his cheek when he was writing it. I don’t know if it’s true but it helps the medicine go down.
Roy Nugen is an award-winning writer, producer, property master, plus actor. He comes from a family of musicians, engineers, wildcatters, cops, lion tamers, and carpet salesmen. Evil Dead II changed his life and he once partied with Lloyd Kaufman.
He has written 15 short films including Bag Full of Trouble, Potboiler, Handle With Care, Death in Lavender, Hole in the Ground, and the feature film Arrive Alive, many of which have played across the country. He has been the property master on 17 short films and 2 feature films.
Roy is also a prolific book reviewer and collector of vintage pulp paperback books. You can read his reviews on his blog Bloody, Spicy Books and multiple magazines including Paperback Fanatic, Hot Lead and Sleazy Reader. He has also written afterwards for novels and for various websites. He lives in the only city that once arrested L. Ron Hubbard with his wife and cats.